Trump’s Arizona pressure campaign starts to crack

Edition · November 22, 2021

Trump’s Arizona pressure campaign starts to crack

A fresh round of disclosures showed Trump and Rudy Giuliani leaning on Arizona’s House speaker with bogus fraud claims — and the campaign quickly scrambling to distance itself from one of its own legal firebrands.

On November 22, 2021, the Trump-world election lie machine produced one of its ugliest aftershocks yet: Trump and Rudy Giuliani were reported to have called Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and pushed him to help overturn Biden’s win, while Trump’s campaign simultaneously moved to disown Sidney Powell, a central promoter of the same fraud fantasy. The day underscored a familiar pattern: Trump’s inner circle kept throwing conspiracy sludge at the wall, and then started frantically cleaning up the mess when the sludge reached actual elected officials and legal exposure.

Closing take

By the end of the day, the damage was no longer just rhetorical. The Trump operation was publicly splintering, the Arizona pressure campaign was on the record, and the election reversal fantasy was colliding with the hard reality of sworn officials who were done playing along.

Ranked by how bad the fuckup was

5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.

Story

Trump and Giuliani’s Arizona pressure campaign backfires in plain sight

Arizona pressure Confidence 4/5

★★★★★Fuckup rating 5/5 Five-alarm fuckup

New reporting and later-corroborated court materials point to Trump and Rudy Giuliani pressing Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers on November 22, 2021 with false claims about election fraud, trying to get him to help replace the state’s legitimate electors. It was a desperate push to turn a statehouse into a redo button for a lost election, and it only reinforced how far Trump’s circle was still willing to go with claims that had already been rejected again and again.

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Story

Trump’s team tries to dump Sidney Powell after embracing her chaos

Powell cleanup Confidence 5/5

★★★☆☆Fuckup rating 3/5 Major mess

On the same day Trump allies were still pushing election conspiracy claims, the campaign moved to publicly separate itself from Sidney Powell, saying she was practicing law on her own and was not part of Trump’s legal team. The cleanup was itself a confession: after weeks of amplifying Powell’s wild theories, Trumpworld was trying to pretend the whole thing had been someone else’s problem.

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